Thursday, March 12, 2009

Lethality looks like lolwhut?

LaRue Tactical, respected maker and seller of AR bits'n'pieces, had an ad campaign that featured the tagline "Lethality Looks Like This".

What lethality looked like, apparently, was a young hottie, braless under an unfastened tac vest, holding a pimped-out M4, with her unbuttoned trousers about to fall off. In glossy, 8.5x11" color on the back cover of SWAT magazine.

Now, I'm not one to get all Mrs. Grundy on an ad department. I know that advertising is an alloy of 50% hype and 50% sex. I know that BMW is not actually the Ultimate Driving Machine; that ParaUSA's GI Expert is not "GI", nor will it make me shoot like an expert; and that this Bud is definitely not for me. I know that I am statistically far from the mean of LaRue's target demographic; a whole bunch more hoo-ah twenty-year-old young males buy their stuff than cranky women old enough to be those Rangers' mom.

Usually, I just got a little chuckle at the full-page, full-color sultry commandette with her drawers half-off on the back cover, and then dove into the magazine to read the Pat Rogers article first, like I always do, before skipping to Louis Awerbuck's column at the back.

It only got embarassing if I was sitting on the front porch when the mailman showed up, and he was staring at my magazine, transfixed by the tactical vixen. I'd blush as he handed it over. I couldn't help it.

I'm a guy, red blooded American male, straight, and not dead. I like pretty wimmins as much as the next guy, but yeah, I could do without LaRue's ads like that. I was using their screensaver until I noticed they had part of that ad as one of the photos- that's something I can't exactly have pop on my computer screen at church.

They make great products and the Dillos are dang useful. But I won't shed any tears when they tone down the sex appeal part of their ads (not the pretty AR-15s, but the pretty wimmins).

Well, there's nothing wrong with using pretty women in ads. I'll bet there are some fine young ladies in ROTC that LaRue could sponsor . . . the kind who a) look good dressed, and b) could actually put some of the LaRueage to good use, and c) could probably outshoot most of the 20 year old hoo-ah/ooh-rah crowd.

How does the song go, something about how there's girls, there's women, and there's ladies?

Dang, here I go again, gettin' all grumpy and curmudgeonified.

Verification? "Ovedemag", that's where the mag release is on a Stoner rifle.

Little like a gripe I once made about the people who draw the covers of some sci-fi and fantasy novels; women in leather & mail bikinis, men in breechclout and moccasins, etc. I think the comment I made was "I'd like to dress the jerk who drew this, and his girlfriend, up this way and then run them through the woods for a while; we'll see how well they think that works THEN!" Then-wife and the kids thought about running through the OK woods in such attire and laughed like hell.

It reaches a point where it's just cheesy. I don't think the ad was intended to be judged for its comedic value, like some of the wimmin-n-gunz pictures that float around the Internet.

This is the same argument that goes on at least twice a year in the letters pages of the Blue Press. Then they took on a model--who apparently is a daughter of a staffer--and not only could she actually shoot the weapon she wore, but she was remarkably popular despite the fact that she didn't appear in her underwear, or a tube-sock with arm holes cut in it.

So my conclusion is that sometimes being over-the-top doesn't really translate to more eyeball prints on the page, and if it does, they will be mostly concentrated in an area where the company's name does not appear.

Couple months ago, the Editor of SWAT mag and his daughter were classmates of mine at a Pat Rogers carbine class in AZ. The daughter took two rounds of just-ejected-hot brass from her neighbor's gun down the buttcrack of her jeans, and she never flinched - just stayed on target and kept on shootin'. Everybody, including Pat, was impressed by her grit. The next day, she admitted to second degree burns which we were not allowed to see.

Maybe LaRue could get HER to be in an ad.

LaRue makes outstanding gear; I was using a LaRue mount under my Aimpoint T1 in the class.

Anon at 1:47 - the famous Tamara picture from the old days at TFL; haven't seen that in a coon's age.

LaRue makes good gear as does Dillon; and usually they manage to keep the advertising tasteful.

Sometimes I wish they would tone it down a bit.

I remember reading that review in SWAT about the lady who attended a Pat Rogers class and got hot brass in a fun place; I laughed when I read it since I've been there as well - got a great burn on my neck from a piece of .45 brass that hung up on my AR buttstock during a transition drill in Pat's class as well.